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Monthly Archives: July 2016

So I happened to put my 2000ad inspired pit slave into the monthly painting comp down at the local store – weird, because I’ve never entered anything like it before… I took it down to show folks the sort of thing I like to do, (I think I perplex some of the younglings in the hobby these days, so was trying to illustrate). Anyway, I ended up leaving him there as my first ever entry to a painting comp… he only went and blinkin’ won it! Now, to put it in perspective, there was only one other entrant, but it was also a very good entrant, so I’m still chuffed 🙂

Here’s the proof, and here’s my trophy!

Tidy!! Anyway, take it easy dudes – off hiking for the week, (so no hobby), and then off to BOYL next weekend, (so all hobby!). I shall endeavour to post over that weekend and keep you worthies in the loop. Catch you on the flip-side!

Hi guys, bit of a different kind of post today – I haven’t gotten anything painted this week what with one thing and another, but one thing I did do was get prepared for this year’s ‘Bring Out Your Lead’. For those of you that don’t know, BOYL is an annual get-together of the OldHammer community up at The Wargames Foundry in Newark. It is run by the legendary Ansell family – custodians of many a fine mould from the early days of Games Workshop, and has been graced many of the sculptors of the early days of GW, (Trish & Ali Morrison, Kev ‘Goblin’ Adams, Colin Dixon to name a few). You can check out more about the Wargames Foundry here.

Anyway, the weekend itself is basically a celebration of all things from the early days (pre ’92) days of WFB and 40k, plus all the specialist games, the miniatures of the era, the painting styles, the publications… you name it! There are a number of organised games, participation games, plus free tables for general use. There are so many games I want to see and try, people I want to meet, and miniatures I want to gawp at! That said, I’m only really geared up to play Rogue Trader, and I needed to prepare a force for a 1200 pt. rolling game… there was only one way to go for me – Praetorian Imperial Guard!

Those of you who have been following this blog for a while might remember my Praetorian force – the Dauntless 215th. Praetorians really were my first OldHammer crush, and I collected and painted them obsessively for quite a while! I’ve amassed quite a sizeable force of more than a hundred of the chaps, plus vehicles, support troops, characters, etc… All are painted to the best of my ability at that time, so no ‘table-top standard’ corners were cut… I’ve developed a bit of a Steampunk/Victoriana theme throughout, and I am really very proud of them all 🙂

Feel free to go back and look at the early months on this blog (for more pictures, battle reports, conversions, etc.) if this has piqued your interest, but as I was doing the list, I thought it might be nice to set up my chosen 1200 point force for a quick photo shoot… So here we are – Lt. Bromhead and 1 Platoon, (mechanised infantry), plus a small sniper support section, have been conscripted by Arturo Lamina – a callow Rogue Trader of growing reputation. His mission is to investigate the mysterious forge world known only as ‘Foundry’… Departure countdown is 7 standard rotations:

So, I hope you enjoyed this post – I know I did! I had forgotten just how much I love my Praetorians, and I’m feeling the urge again… I still have a couple of platoons in the lead pile too, and I keep meaning to get back to them one day… Hmmm… 😉

Hello chaps – another week, another mini, another sketchy song-lyric-for-a-title… (nice one Skee-lo!). I’ve been on a bit of a go-slow this last week – there is so much going on at the moment! It’s all mostly study related, but I did manage to finish the Dwarf from WQ-ST (hence the title & song choice… see what I did there?)

Well, what can I say about the Dwarf? This was the hero that I was least looking forward to painting… fiddly, complex, and a faction that doesn’t really draw me in. I found him a sod to paint – the level of detail is insane, while the proportions, exaggerated musculature, and total lack of clothing conspire to make this model quite grotesque in my opinion… I mean, I had to paint his cheek-meat ffs, and if you get the chance, look carefully under the kilt – I am sure there is a hint of a ball-sack

Ahem… anyway, I decided to embrace this ugliness, and had a play with the idea of the runes that are hammered into his skin to give him super strength & armour, (and remove the need for clothes apparently). I figured that such an effect might reasonably be expected to leave its mark, (beyond the obvious), and so I painted lots of livid veins, as if the runes are polluting the character’s blood stream somehow. I think this exaggerates the grotesqueness of the mini nicely, while contrasting pleasantly with the otherwise clean-cut and heroic look of his equipment. To me, it reads like he’s ostensibly a ‘good guy’, but there is also something disturbing going on… maybe even a little sinister… This, (in my humble opinion), makes him a bit more interesting than he might’ve otherwise been. Anyway, enough chit-chat, what do you guys think?

Next up, I’m going to tackle the Griffhound – I’m away on a hiking break next week, so I just want something quick and easy to crank out. Also, I’ll be working out a 1200 point force for Rogue Trader, ready for BOYL (Bring Out Your Lead) – the annual OldHammer event at the Foundry Miniatures in Nottingham on the 5th, 6th & 7th of August. Time to dust off my Praetorian Imperial Guard and do a spot of spot of list building! I may well take a few pictures as I sort out the list and share them with you – it has been too long since the Dauntless 215th graced the pages of this blog 😉

Ok, so that is really reaching for a song-based title for this post, but hey, KLF is gonna rock you 🙂 Right, down to business. First up, my apologies for not getting this post out sooner – busy busy, blah blah blah… but good news my friends, since we last spoke I painted my first mini from WQ Silver Tower, and this represents the start point of my latest project – to paint the whole set! Now I know there are a few OldHammerers who frequent this blog, and that WQ-ST is the kind of subject that gets beards wagging, and true aficionado lead-heads grumbling into their Bugmans XXXXXX, but hear me out peeps! First up, the game is pretty darn cool to play – not as focussed on advancement as the original Warhammer Quest was of course, but the gameplay is slick co-op and is really good fun. Secondly, the models are (mostly) really cool, with some lovely old-school touches – the familiars and the Tzaangors for example. Ok, so the Dwarf and the Gobbo-spiders to be pretty meh, but the rest is solid if you ask me. Thirdly, at least for me, the set is a good motivator to paint up some stuff that is way out of my usual stomping ground, so it’s good practice from a pure painting perspective.

Anyhow, enough of the justification trip, let’s look at what I did! I decided to tackle the Stormcast Eternal first up, (hence the tenuous song link in the title), and I don’t mind admitting that I chose him because I thought he would be fairly easy… Yeah right… I found him really tough to paint – such a heroic model deserves a clean and crisp paintjob, which is very different to my usual grungy look, and therefore way out of my comfort zone. That said, he was a joy to paint – clean lines, great pose, and some really lovely detail. I was determined to go with my own colour scheme rather than one of the official Chapter Stormhost ones, and I settled on this rather nice Red & Silver, with gold sort of acting as a spot colour:

(Oooh, grown-up photography too!) The red armour plates actually started out gold as well, and were painted/washed/highlighted in the usual way before being painted over with the new red gem paint from GW. This is a continuation of my coloured metallics experiment from my last post, and I’m much happier with the results this time around. The rest of the painting is straight forward enough, the only other thing noteworthy is the work on the base. I had a ridiculous amount of fun gluing old watch parts together to give the effect of complex clockwork machinery – it took ages, but I thought this look might work well in a Silver Tower setting, and so I persevered. I’m really glad I did, and I like it well enough to carry the theme through for the whole set, (though probably not as complex for the less important figures).

Anyway, that’s all for this week folks – it isn’t much, but hey, better than nothing right? I’m happy with how he turned out, but what do you guys think? ‘Stormcast Eternal’, or ‘Cloudy with a chance of drizzle’? Also, which of the Silver Tower heroes will be next??? Tell you what – put your vote in below and I’ll go with the most popular answer 🙂

Hello chaps, I hope you’re all well! I have two minis to share with you this week – again, I have been working through my pile of undercoated but otherwise neglected minis. First up is this official looking chap from the ‘Spacelords’ range from Moonraker Miniatures:

He’s pretty straight forward on the painting front, and is very much intended to fit in with my PDF types on the clothing colours, (though he can also double up as a generic civilian, security guard, robot handler, prisoner transport officer… he’s quite a flexible little fella!). The model isn’t that great if I’m honest – loads of nice detail, but I suspect it is slightly miscast around the insides of the arms… it doesn’t show too much though, so he’ll do:

Secondly, I have an experiment to share. I returned to a mini that I have started and stopped about three times – I have really struggled to find any motivation to paint this guy for a number of reasons… 1: He’s an Eldar, and I really don’t find the faction that interesting (even in RT). 2: He’s an Eldar, and that means clean lines, crisp colours, sharp highlights… a far cry from my usual weathered look. 3: He’s an Eldar.

BUT… this time I grasped the nettle and decided to get this guy off my bench once and for all. I also had an idea that I wanted to test – I wanted to see if I could get a reasonable coloured metallic look out of the new Citadel gem paints, and this guy got to be the guinea pig. I decided to try the green gloss over a copper base coat on his body armour, and it turned out like this:

Hmmm… Not sure if I like the effect or not – the paint is basically a coloured gloss and so looks quite thick and gloopy on the model, (though to be fair, I did get a bit impatient with the application, so this is at least partially due to my own heavy-handedness!). I also think that the colour scheme is a bit ‘meh’, which doesn’t really help the overall look. However, looking at the positives, the end result is certainly is metallic and coloured, so I have to conclude that the test is at least a partial success. I am certain that a more patient approach with thinner layers of this gem paint will likely look much better, and I strongly suspect that the blue one would’ve looked better too. I’ll probably test this idea further, (I quite fancy trying a Sigmarine in blue enamelled armour instead of the usual gold), but I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide if you like the result or not 🙂

Anyhow, that’s it for another week dudes, have a good one, I’ll catch you on the flip-side.

Hello chaps, just the one finished model to show you this week – I have had him undercoated and kicking around the place for some time, so I thought I would crank him out with a view to clearing some backlog and sharpening up my brush work. This time it is the 1991 Penal Trooper – aka ‘The Human Bomb’, (political correctness being less of a thing 25 years ago!), though I prefer to look at him as a max security prisoner who is wired to go bang if he misbehaves rather than a walking piece of ordinance. I had the prison break scene in ‘The Running-man’ movie in mind, and, as such, I didn’t want him to look ‘equipped’. In the end, I just gave him a makeshift weapon using bits from the ever-popular Flagellants kit – I imagine he’s in the act of breaking out of Supermax, (or is mid-riot inside), and he has just grabbed the first hitty thing that he could lay his hands on:

Paint-wise, I embraced the deranged facial expression of the mini, accentuating this with a 2 o’clock shadow, and added some tattoos and a rather pleasing blood spatter effect. I couldn’t resist going with the obvious Guantanamo Orange for the jump suit, and I used Kantor Blue for the explosive vest. Happily, this ties him in with a few other little collections I have on the go:

Overall, a quick and satisfying paint job, and another half-finished piece off the list. That’s it for another week, catch you next week & have a great weekend 🙂